Lifecycle management is a feature that helps you govern an asset through its entire lifecycle, from creation to retirement. Asset statuses represent each lifecycle stage. Activities such as assessments, sign-offs, and smart checks gate progression between stages. The Lifecycle tracker visualizes the current stage and any outstanding activities directly on the asset page.
The Lifecycle management feature is available for all asset types (in preview), except for BI Folder, BI Report, Data Element, Data Structure, and their child asset types. It's enabled by default for the following asset types. For all other eligible asset types, it is disabled by default.
- AI Agent
- AI Agent Version
- AI Base Model
- AI Model Version
- AI Use Case
For information on enabling this feature, go to Enable or disable the Lifecycle management feature.
Related features
Lifecycle management works closely with the following features, which are also part of the Governance by design toolkit.
- Lifecycle tracker: A visual progress tracker shown on the asset page. It displays the current lifecycle stage, outstanding activities, and controls for advancing the asset to the next stage.
- Lifecycle activities: Tasks attached to specific lifecycle stages that must be completed before an asset can advance. There are three types: assessments, sign-off activities, and smart checks. Activities can be configured to run automatically for all new assets of a type, or added manually on individual asset pages. For more information, go to Configure lifecycle activities for an asset type.
- Sign-off activities: Formal confirmations that a specific requirement was met or an instruction was followed. When configured as required, a sign-off must be completed before an asset can advance to the next lifecycle stage.
- Smart checks (in preview): Automated, real-time validation rules that enforce metadata quality standards on asset pages. When configured as lifecycle activities, smart checks run when an asset enters a specific stage and surface pass or fail results inline.
- AI writing assistant (in preview): An AI-powered tool that generates and improves text attribute content directly in the attribute editor on the asset page, helping stewards meet metadata quality requirements faster.
Asset statuses as a representation of lifecycle stages
All assets are created with a certain asset status, for example Candidate, which indicates the condition of the asset. By enabling the Lifecycle management feature, you're opting to use asset statuses to represent the lifecycle stages in which an asset can exist at any point in time.
With the help of various tools and features, such as the Lifecycle tracker and lifecycle activities, you determine and manually control the lifecycle stage of an asset.
Lifecycle phases
Lifecycle stages are organized into two phases, configured separately on the Core phase and Retirement phase tabs.
For guidance on how to configure lifecycle stages, go to Configure the lifecycle stages for an asset type.
Core phase
Asset statuses in the Core phase tab represent the active lifecycle stages of an asset. The first status in the list — Ideation, in the example above — determines the initial status of all newly created assets of that type. Core phase statuses are reflected in the Lifecycle tracker.
The following image shows an example core phase status configuration as reflected in the Lifecycle tracker on an asset page.
Retirement phase
Asset statuses in the Retirement phase tab represent the inactive lifecycle stages of an asset — for example, Rejected and Archived for the AI Use Case asset type. Retired assets remain in Collibra, but their statuses are not reflected in the Lifecycle tracker or in the Model Analytics widget.